On Bravery

"You make me brave. You make me brave. You call me out beyond the shore into the waves."

I was listening to this song on and off throughout the week at work, and it wasn't until yesterday that the thought struck me...what do I consider being brave? Listening to this song conjures images of radical acts of selflessness and courage in my mind - overseas missions, innercity missions, standing for the truth and facing real persecution. But what does being brave mean to me in my every day life?

Is it brave to love, support, and submit to my husband when we can't reach an agreement?

Is it brave to offer tea and a place to cry to a friend who has been hurt?

Is it brave to honor those in authority over me?

Is it brave to offer my best work each day at my 8-5 desk job?

Is it brave to love well?

Is it brave to act in obedience, even when I'm bitterly disappointed by giving something up?

Is it brave to raise a family and teach them to love Jesus and to obey His Word?

Is it brave to tithe faithfully?

Is it brave to persevere when I feel taken for granted?

Personally, I see great bravery in people in my life on a daily basis. Consistent, quiet, faithful bravery. I see bravery lived out without calling attention to itself. I see bravery lived out as people choose an intentional life in the face of a world that applauds the easy superficiality. I see my siblings choosing to be parents rather than buddies to their kids. I see my father choosing to work long hours with excellence and integrity. I see my mother choosing to speak hard truths with much love. I see my husband humbly acknowledging when he is wrong, and being willing to grow and change. I see my friends standing for truth in small things that seem easier to compromise. I see fierce love for the orphans, the widows, the outcast, the slandered, the wronged, the forgotten. I see great bravery all around me, most of it stemming from obedience to the One who calls us to live a life that is radically different from the world around us.

What life am I cultivating?

There's recently been a lot of intriguing online press regarding social media and the effect it can have on identity. Whether positive or negative, it seems that no one contests that social media has an effect. For most, that effect is often on self-perception or self-promotion.

I am not going to clamor and assert that social media is inherently anything, good or bad. It is a tool. Tools can be used wisely, tools can be used foolishly. But we cannot blame the tools for how we use them.

My conviction lies more in how I myself use social media, and what life I cultivate. Am I pouring more time and effort into curating an image and cultivating a life online? Or am I spending my time, resources, and energies to pour into the lives of people around me? Am I staging pictures to portray an image of life, happiness, and harmony? Or am I working on relationships with people around me to cultivate connection, truth, and joy? Which is more important to me: experiencing the moment, or capturing a moment? Am I filled with joy by the things I see on my friends' posts, or am I filled with jealousy? 

I often don't have answers to these questions. More often than not, I don't like the answers to these questions when I'm truly honest with myself. But I want to cultivate a life characterized by real connection with real people in real day-to-day life. Much like life, it's a process. The end result isn't a stellar collection of pictures, it's a life lived with intention and presence. 

Maundy Thursday

Lent is my favorite season in the liturgical calendar. I love the extended time to focus on the life, ministry, and death of Christ. And I love the anticipation that it builds toward celebrating the Resurrection! It can be such a beautiful season of fasting, grieving, and thorough celebration.

To be honest, this season of Lent hasn't felt very focused for me. Ryan and I were out of town for nearly every weekend in March, which put our search for a church home in Laramie on hold for a bit longer than we were expecting. In addition to that, work at SROM has been incredibly full and a little overwhelming for me at times. It's been a hard season to focus! But I'm realizing that I am thankful for two things: one, that my salvation is not based on whether or not I can keep myself focused and fasting for forty days. And, two, that there is still time to experience some of the richness of this season! God is so good like that, isn't He? To remind us of things that we've distracted ourselves from in enough time to still get to experience them! What a gift!

I pray that in this weekend is a time of rest and reflection. I pray for the grace to sit at the feet of my Lord and meditate on His sacrifice. I pray for a deeper understanding of the Resurrection, and an overwhelming joy and celebration on Sunday!
 

Justice is not my Savior

"When through grace in Christ our trust is,

Justice smiles and asks no more."

-- John Newton, Let Us Love and Sing and Wonder

All too often I find myself putting my faith and hope in Justice. I expect the scales to be blind and unbiased, and yet I expect Justice to be on my side. I expect Justice to agree with me and to help me determine my morality. I want Justice to direct me, guide me, and gently correct me when I err. I want Justice to be swift when I feel wronged, but slow to anger against me when I have a good excuse.

The problem with this is that Justice does none of those things. Justice does not gently correct, it demands an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Justice does not determine my morality, unless my morality is to do only that for which I am rewarded and avoid doing that for which I will be punished. Justice--true Justice--shows no favoritism, holds no record of past merits to bail one out of present infractions; Justice can show no partiality, no grace, and will not acknowledge extenuating circumstances.

If I turn to Justice as my savior, Justice rightly condemns me before a perfect God. If I turn to Justice as my savior, I am bitterly disappointed because of the evil I see in this world. Justice isn't big enough to be my savior.

My Savior is Just, but He is also Grace, Patience, and Love. My Savior is firm in His correction, but He is also gentle. My Savior is Good, and He is eternal. He will bring Justice, but He has first extended His hand in friendship. My Savior loves and seeks the orphan, the widow, the downtrodden, the hurting; my Savior loves and seeks me. My Savior trusts me to seek others on His behalf. My Savior is my true and lasting hope. My Savior is forgiving. My Savior is my Guide, and He sticks with me even when I ignore His direction and cry out against the consequences of my stubborn choices. My Savior shows me how to extend grace, patience, and love to those that I would rather throw at the feet of Justice.

My Savior is not a doormat. He will not tolerate the injustice of this world for long. He will come and He will set things right in His kingdom. My Savior is strong, and He is fierce. He has all authority in Heaven and on Earth, and He will come in power to exercise it. 

And yet, my Savior waits. He waits so that He may cover yet more people with His righteousness before He comes wielding true Justice. He waits so that more may joyfully sing, 'when through grace in Christ our trust is, Justice smiles and asks no more.' 

And so I am torn between the two: I desire for Christ to come in glory, which is better by far. But He deems it more necessary for us that He waits. Convinced of this, I know that I will remain, and I will continue with all of you to know Him and make Him known.

Reflections on Lent

From what I can tell, the season of Lent often gets a bad reputation for being legalistic, contrived, and a contributor to a works-based righteousness mentality.  I agree that we need to avoid legalism and going through the motions without engaging at a heart level.  I agree that we need to avoid works-based righteousness and to avoid seeing Lent as a means to 'earn' our way to holiness.  But the same can be true of any of the spiritual disciplines we practice at any point in time!  We need to avoid throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

There are absolutely times that I don't feel like fasting, or reading my Bible, or praying, or worshiping, or any other of the spiritual disciplines.  There are times when it feels like I'm going through the motions and when the actions that I do are stale.  There are times when my relationship with God feels distant and I feel apathetic.  There are times when everything about following Christ feels empty.  There are times when my relationship with God is incredibly fulfilling and I feel so satisfied in Him!  There are times when all I want to do is rejoice in who He is and what He has done.  There are times when my relationship with Jesus brings me such amazing Joy!  Feelings can be great!

But Love is not a feeling.

My relationship with Christ is not based on how I feel, much in the same way that my relationship with family and loved ones is not based on how I feel toward them at any given moment.  If those relationships were based on feelings, I would give up every time things became difficult, or communication was stressful, or I was dissatisfied or disappointed or tired or hungry.  My feelings are fickle!  I can't base my human relationships on how I feel, so why is that mentality so prevalent in regards to a relationship with God?  

Love is not a feeling, it is a choice.  I choose to stick with my family through the hard times (and by the grace of God they stick with me!) knowing that those hard times do pass.  When I tell someone that I love them, I'm reaffirming my commitment to them and to the relationship between us.  When a relationship is damaged I might not necessarily feel like putting forth the effort to mend it, but unless something changes the relationship will continue to grow distant.  By putting my own feelings aside and meeting the other person wherever they may be, I'm showing them the depth of my love.  I'm not trying to prove that I love them, but I am acting out that love.

When I feel distant from God and that relationship feels empty, I need to discipline myself to continue to pray, to continue to read His Word, and to continue to seek Him.  It is the times when those feelings are gone that I need to press in and practice spiritual disciplines the most.  When those feelings are gone and I still press in to God, I'm saying (to myself almost more than to God) that He is more important to me than the way that I feel; that He is more constant than my immediate emotional state of being; that relationship with Him is worth the effort even if I don't see immediate results.  

God has already made the ultimate display of Love in the life, ministry, and sacrifice of Christ Jesus.  He has already met us where we were (and continues to meet us where we are) that we may be reconciled to Him and know His great Love.  Therefore, when I feel emptiness, when I feel distance, when I feel stale and apathetic toward God, it is because of the state of my own heart, not because He has failed me in some way.  It is because I have grown complacent, or prideful, or self-satisfied, or entitled, or any number of things that I gravitate toward naturally.  I need the outside structure of disciplines - of Lent - to keep my own feelings in their proper place.  

Lord, please use this season of Lent to draw me closer to You.  Remind me that my relationship with you is garnished by feelings, but that those feelings do not make up the substance of our relationship.  Remind me to seek You in the faith that You are always there and that You desire to be found by me.  I pray that You would draw me into deeper relationship with You, and that You would give me the grace to continue to seek You even when I don't feel like it.  I love You, Lord.

Lessons Learned in the Van

I've always loved road trips.  I love packing the car to best utilize every square inch of space.  I love putting together a snack box to treat myself to fresh fruit or veggies halfway down the road.  I even love the crappy gas station coffee as I watch the sun rise over the highway after driving for 3 hours.  I love making long playlists for different moods of the road:  mellow for the very beginning of the trip, but building quickly into golden classic rock songs to belt out as the highway stretches on to the horizon.  Or maybe I'm the only one who does that...that's okay too.

This past weekend, I got to drive down to El Paso with my church.  28 of us from our church piled into SROM's 2 new (used) 15-passenger vans early last week and started the 14-hour drive down south.  It reminded me a bit of the many hours I spent in similar vans on youth group trips in high school!  It was a great opportunity to get to connect with people in my church that I previously hadn't had a chance to get to know very well.  (It's amazing how quickly you can get to know people when you're crammed in the back seat together fighting the beginnings of feeling carsick.)

We arrived in Texas around 7:30pm on Thursday night and were warmly greeted by our church family in El Paso.  As exhausted as we were from the road trip, it was such a joy to connect and mingle with brothers and sisters in El Paso, from Kansas City, and from Fort Collins.  Even now as I reflect on it, our church family network is pretty amazing!  Ray, the pastor in El Paso, stood up to welcome us, orient us on the building we were staying in, and give us a basic schedule for the weekend (a very basic and very flexible schedule).  

Our Laramie church family had planned on going to Juarez to work with a children's ministry on Friday afternoon, which gave us time to solidify plans on Friday morning.  We also had an amazing time of prayer and worship on the roof of the school building!  It was amazing to get to look over the city of El Paso, and then turn and look over the border to Juarez.  We prayed for our time there and for the ministries on both sides of the Rio.  Piling again into our trusty vans, we crossed quickly over into Mexico and jumped in to help with the kids.  

I've done children's ministry in Hispanic cultures before, and every time I deeply wish I could speak Spanish!  But I'm also reminded of the love language of kids: playing.  We set up different games for the kids, had a puppet show, and painted faces, all with the heart to just love on the kids as much as we could!  I got to work at the face painting table, and quickly memorized the three most popular requests:  mariposa (butterfly), estrella (star), and corazón (heart).  As the afternoon passed, I slowly started remembering little bits and pieces of the Spanish I've collected from past trips...and it's amazing how quickly I forget them again!  

Saturday we split up and worked at two food distributions that the church in El Paso runs.  We spent the first two hours packing food into plastic bags for people to pick up as they came through.  The actual distribution is open from 10-12 the first Saturday of every month, and serves about 300 people at each location every month.  Along with caring for the physical needs of providing food, the church also offers to pray for each person that comes through.  Many smile, thank us for the food, and decline prayer.  But there are several who came through who eagerly accepted prayer.  Ray coached us to not fall into the trap of simply praying for their immediate situation (for a sickness, for provision of a job, for the healing of a family member).  He reminded us that the greatest thing we can offer them is Jesus, and it is Jesus who works all things (including immediate challenges and trials) together for His glory and His kingdom.

As we were packing the food, I kept thinking about Mary and Martha preparing for Jesus and his disciples.  I am a Martha by nature...I'm most comfortable being busy and packing the food and getting things done.  It's much harder for me to be Mary and to be content to simply sit at Jesus' feet and love as he loved:  without a schedule.  Once we were done packing and the people started coming in for the food distribution, there wasn't much for me to do other than smile and welcome them, and thank them for coming.  The entire time, my internal thoughts were running along the lines of "Is this really the best use of my time?  Aren't there other projects I could be working on?  What else can I be doing?"  But Jesus doesn't call us to always be doing.  He calls us to love the person in front of us.  And loving people means stopping myself from seeing people as another project to add to our missions trip to justify the long drive and the expense, and to look them in the eye and love them as Jesus loved them.  Without agenda, without impatience, without busyness.

Spending 14+ hours each way in a van provides ample time for reflection (another thing that I love about road trips).  As we were driving back on Sunday, I thought about what my agenda had been for the weekend, and what ended up being God's agenda.  The leadership in my church had much less of a project mentality, and much more of a person mentality.  We went to El Paso to connect with our church family and to support them in their ministry.  We didn't go so we could leave feeling like we had accomplished some sort of project; we didn't go because the church in El Paso needed us for any project of labor.  We went because they are our family, and we love them.

Sip, Don't Guzzle

One of the reasons that I love wilderness ministry so much is the near-endless metaphors I see for life.  One of my dear friends has worked as a guide at YoungLife Wilderness Ranch, and I think they say it well:  "Life is like the trail, and the trail is like life."

One of the reminders I need most consistently is that of daily dependence.  The truth of it is, we were never made to be "one and done" creatures.  Our bodies aren't made that way, our hearts aren't made that way, our spirits aren't made that way.  I get this reminder frequently in the wilderness when I have to remind myself (and others) to be continually sipping from water bottles.  To be frank, staying hydrated can be incredibly inconvenient.  I have to stop, dig out my water bottle, catch my breath, and try to sip carefully without dumping it all over myself.  (Okay, so it doesn't sound all that bad...but think about trying to drink from a full wide-mouthed Nalgene with a fully-loaded 85L pack on without losing your balance on a narrow, rocky trail.)  Not only that, but I have to make these stops frequently.  How much more convenient it would be to chug one or two water bottles with breakfast before hitting the trail and have that hydrate me for the day!  Unfortunately, our bodies can usually only process about a quarter of a gallon every hour; that's a maximum of 4 cups of water per hour.  Drinking a ton of water all at once won't really benefit me much at all, and it will mostly just pass through my system...leading to other inconveniences along the hike.  It's much more beneficial to be taking small sips here and there throughout the day.  (Thus the glorious invention of the hydration bladder!)

As we say on the trail, "sip, don't guzzle."  

It's easy for me to slip into the habit of working off my own strength during the week (or month...or year...) and fooling myself into thinking that I'll "catch up" with Jesus eventually.  When I invariably get behind on a year-long Bible reading plan, I brush it off with the thought that I'll just cram all of the week's readings in over the weekend.  If I haven't been spending regular time in prayer, I tell myself that I'll dedicate hours to journal and pray sometime soon...eventually.  (Here's hoping I don't try and extend this mentality to fasting...)  Sometimes in my 'urgent' mentality, staying dependent on the Lord can seem incredibly inconvenient.  I have to stop what I'm doing, dig out my Bible or my journal, carve time out of my too-hurried schedule, and sit and be quiet and wait on Jesus.  Not only that, but I have to remind myself to stop and be still frequently.  It would be so much more convenient to be able to just load up my spirit on time with the Lord and have that carry me through until I feel thirsty again!  Inconveniently, my spirit needs more than just a 'one and done' relationship with the Lord.  Fortunately, He is not satisfied with just my weekends or the time that deem free enough to spend with Him.  Christ wants all of my life, and He wants me to invite Him into every corner.

In my relationship with Christ, I need to fight against the instinct to guzzle.  I benefit so much more from taking "sips" throughout the day:  listening to Scripture while at work, finding things to thank Him for throughout the day, stopping to see the sunrise or set while marveling at His colors painted on the clouds, praying for students before making course check-in calls, spending mornings reading from His Word, journaling regularly, praying without ceasing.  These are all things that I wish I could say I did with regularity.  I wish I could say that I don't see this ongoing need as an inconvenience, or worse, as a challenge to my independence.  ("You're telling me I need You every minute of every day?  I bet I don't!  I bet I can do it all by myself!")  

If I refuse to acknowledge my need for water along the trail, I grow weak, get headaches, and become a liability to my travel group.  If I refuse to acknowledge my need for Christ throughout my day, I burn out, become irritable and frustrated, and grow distant from the community around me.  If I try to guzzle too much water at once, it passes uselessly through my system and makes me have to pee a lot.  If I try to cram all of my time with Jesus into a few short hours once or twice a week, I don't really retain anything and end up not really seeing how He wants to change my habits and thought patterns.  

Lord, give me the grace to sip from Your Word throughout the day.  Remind me of how You are the only one that truly satisfies my thirst.  Let me see this ongoing need for You as a blessing rather than an inconvenience.  Let me be like a tree planted by streams of water, constantly soaking You in and growing in You.  Guard me against self-dependence and free me from the busyness I so eagerly embrace.  Give me quiet times with You, and may I be satisfied only by You.

Oh to Grace how great a debtor

If, as the ancient hymn asserts, I'm daily a debtor to Grace, to whom or what am I indebted? 

Like most of my millennial peers, when I don't know the answer to something, I find myself typing "www.google.com" before I even have a clear understanding of how to phrase my search.  (What Would Google Say? perhaps becoming the new go-to for my generation...more thoughts on that later.)  Well, a Google search offers audio pronunciation, phonetic spelling, a fairly thorough etymology, translation options, and multiple definitions of the word "grace."  Nestled in all of that, the closest thing I could find to a description of Grace worthy of debt was "the free and unmerited favor of God, as manifested in the salvation of sinners and the bestowal of blessings."  For a quick definition from Google, I think that's actually pretty good!  But knowing the definition is much different from understanding the concept.

In his book What's so Amazing about Grace?, author Philip Yancey spends about 300 pages trying to recapture the deep meaning of Grace, something he describes as "the last best word."  In his first chapter, he quotes a counselor who beautifully describes why Grace has lost much of its meaning:

"Many years ago I was driven to the conclusion that the two major causes of most emotional problems among evangelical Christians are these:  the failure to understand, receive, and live out God's unconditional grace and forgiveness; and the failure to give out that unconditional love, forgiveness, and grace to other people... We read, we hear, we believe a good theology of grace.  But that's not the way we live.  The good news of the Gospel of grace has not penetrated the level of our emotions."  (italics mine)

I can have all of the tools of theology at my disposal in regards to understanding Grace, but unless I allow it to change my thinking and my habits I am no better off than a Google search, parroting back the definition without any meaning.  Perhaps it is hard to understand Grace because there is something in our nature that inherently does not want to accept Grace.  It offends our sense of "I can do it all by myself!"  We much prefer a system that asserts that we earn what we want and we keep what we earn.  In this 'bootstraps' mentality, we feel like we have a right to whatever it is we have worked for; Grace demands that we recognize that it is something we cannot and will not ever earn.  

In our relationship with God, we try to avoid the debt to Grace by working our way to Him.  As Yancey says,

"Even when we have committed a wrong, we want to earn our way back into the injured party's good graces.  We prefer to crawl on our knees, to wallow, to do penance, to kill a lamb - and religion often obliges us."

Legalism and religion often offer ways in which we can try to make deposits in our account with God.  Contrasted with faith and relationship (in which we have nothing but God's Grace to rest on), legalism feels secure because it tells us that we have something to offer, that we bring something to this transaction, that we can be in some sort of control.  Legalism lets us think we can avoid the debt to Grace, because who likes going into debt?  Relying on Grace, however, means that we give up anything we thought we could offer, and we approach God simply and purely on the basis of Christ's sacrifice.  

Not on our sacrifice, not on our terms, not in our own merit.  

"Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.  For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ..." (Philippians 3:8-9, ESV)

This is the daily debt we owe to Grace:  that we count anything we once thought we could offer as "rubbish" and come to God with nothing but a desperate prayer that He will see us as covered by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.  And He does.  He extends Grace to us, and we receive "the free and unmerited favor of God, as manifested in the salvation of sinners and the bestowal of blessings."   If, as Yancey quotes, "we read, we hear, we believe a good theology of grace.  But that's not the way we live," we rob ourselves of experiencing that "free and unmerited favor" and we instead spend our lives striving to earn a place at God's table...something we can never hope to do.

Matters of Consequence

"I know a planet where there is a certain red-faced gentleman.  He has never smelled a flower.  He has never looked at a star.  He has never loved anyone.  He has never done anything in his life but add up figures.  And all day he says over and over, just like you: 'I am busy with matters of consequence!'  And that makes him swell up with pride.  But he is not a man--he is a mushroom!"  (from The Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupery)

  Sometimes the most beautiful truths are written in the language of children.  How often in my own life I lose sight of what is truly important because I'm so caught up in 'matters of consequence' that seem so urgent in the moment.  I lose the importance of loving the person in front of me because I'm so focused on things that demand to be addressed immediately.  Another writer has called this the "Tyranny of the Urgent", and has wisely pointed out that 

"we live in constant tension between the urgent and the important.  The problem is that the important tasks rarely must be done today or even this week [...] But the urgent tasks call for instant action--endless demands pressure every hour and day."  

Urgent tasks seem to be "matters of consequence," and like the red-faced gentleman in The Little Prince, we let ourselves swell up with pride in being so busy and having so many urgent tasks to demand our time.  Urgent tasks will always clamor to be addressed in the moment, and we will feel a fleeting sense of accomplishment in being able to check them off of a to-do list.  We use this sense of achieving and producing to justify to ourselves and others why we are not focusing on what truly matters.  Urgent things are quantifiable, important things are not.  Important things take time, they rarely yield immediate rewards, and they are hard to explain to people.  But it is the important things that have the power to truly impact our lives and the lives of those around us.

When we look at the life of Jesus, we see that he consistently refused to yield to the urgent and instead focused on the important mission his Father had sent him on.  Jesus knew the heart of his Father, and he spent a great deal of time and energy in prayer and meditation before his Father to stay focused on the importance of the things his Father was concerned with.  How much more do we need to be focused on learning the heart of the Father as well!  The urgent will always crowd out the important unless we intentionally focus on Who it is that we serve and what it is that He would have us do.

My pastor recently taught on really taking the time to know Jesus and love Him, because "the degree to which we see Jesus is the degree to which we serve Him."  I can probably figure out things that God sees as important because I grew up in the Church, I read my Bible, and I had John 3:16 memorized years before I actually understood the depth of what it means.  But if I try to follow through with what I understand as being important to God without really seeing and loving Jesus, these eternally important things become mere "matters of consequence" to be ticked off of a checklist, people are essentially objectified into figures to be added up, and I lose all of the love that would have fueled my actions.  And, as Paul has said so eloquently, 

"If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.  And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.  If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing."  (1 Corinthians 13:1-3, ESV)

All of the things Paul lists are good things, but the actions alone are not the best thing.  The best thing--the important thing--is Love.  How easy it is to lose sight of the important!  Lord, give me the grace to seek Your face and Your heart each and every day.  May I see You and love You more today than I did yesterday so that I may truly focus on the important things You put in front of me today.  I don't want to be a mushroom.

Lessons from "The Box"

I joined a CrossFit-type gym here in Laramie, and I've been going with several of my coworkers during our lunch break every MWF.  My boss warned us that for the first 6-8 weeks it feels like you've been hit by a train, but that eventually you get stronger, you recover faster, and then you can add more weight (...and start the pain cycle all over again).  I believed him on some level, but I was definitely unprepared for how completely wrecked my body would be by these workouts.  There was a part of me that subconsciously thought "These workouts are only a half hour.  I can do anything for 30 minutes!"  

False.  I cannot do anything for 30 minutes.  In fact, I can't do most of the workouts for the full 30 minutes.  (Yet.)

I used to think I was strong, but these workouts have given me a serious dose of reality.  And every time I go in for the 'workout of the day,' I'm humbled yet again.  I'm realizing that I can believe I'm as strong as I want to, but the real proof comes when I start testing those muscles.  If I don't push those muscles to their capacity, I can let myself think that they are much stronger and more capable than they actually are.  Though it's humbling, frustrating, and discouraging to be physically unable to do the full workout, those muscles will never get stronger unless I keep pushing and working.

I think I fall into the same habit of thinking in life outside of "the Box."  I can let myself think that I'm doing just fine in other areas in my life, but it's because I may not be stretching and testing myself.  How do we train ourselves in those areas?  Through community.  If I am not entering into true, deep, intentional community with others, I will never grow as a whole person.  Sure, I can read and think and journal to try and stretch myself, but what good will that growth do me if I don't act it out in community?  

In his letter to the Philippians, Paul challenges the church to live in humble service to one another in community:

"If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose.  Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves.  Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others."  (Philippians 2:1-4 NIV84)

 Paul calls the Philippians to live out their unity with Christ, through serving each other.  Do you have any comfort from his love?  Great!  Share that comfort with your neighbor by serving them.  Do you have fellowship with the Spirit?  Praise God!  That fellowship should drive you to enter into fellowship with your community and bless them.  Has the Lord cultivated tenderness and compassion in you?  Wonderful!  Demonstrate his work by being tender and compassionate to those around you.  

I can tell myself that I absolutely am growing in these areas, but unless I test those spiritual muscles and extend myself on behalf of others, how will I really know that I am growing?  And how will I keep growing if I don't exercise those lessons in community?

Our salvation is never conditional upon what we do.  Our salvation is paid for, completely and totally, by Christ's work on the Cross.  But when the Lord starts doing a work in my life, I'm excited about it and I'm called to share that work with those in my life to increase their faith.  Yes, it might be painful and humbling in the moment, but the results of His sanctifying work in my are definitely to be celebrated!  It is through my actions and interactions within deep community that I get to demonstrate how He has changed and is changing me.  

I am eagerly looking forward to going rock climbing this summer because I know that all of the pain, muscle spasms, and soreness right now are making me stronger and more able to do the things I love.  Shouldn't I be just as eager to show what the Lord is doing in my heart and spirit? 

Cumulative Impact

Those familiar with the Leave No Trace (LNT) principles will know that the phrase 'cumulative impact' is frequently used to describe the effect of outdoor enthusiasts on the environments in which we play.  One hiker sidestepping a muddy patch of trail won't do much damage; but a hundred hikers sidestepping the same muddy patch will widen the trail substantially.  On the other side, one person choosing to clean up Snickers wrappers and microtrash from a campsite won't have much effect on the entire mountain range; but a hundred hikers consciously picking up after themselves (and others) will leave a much larger area in better condition.  One decision might not effect noticeable change, but the cumulative impact of decisions effects significant change.  

The same philosophy is true in one's walk with the Lord.  I cannot simply pray once and expect a deep relationship with my heavenly Father.  That relationship, like all relationships, must be intentionally cultivated.  Soren Kierkegaard notes in Fear and Trembling that his generation is losing sight of the richness of a deep faith:

 "In our time nobody is content to stop with faith but wants to go further.  It would perhaps be rash to ask where these people are going, but is is surely a sign of breeding and culture for me to assume that everybody has faith, for otherwise it would be queer for them to be...going further.  In those old days it was different, then faith was a task for a whole lifetime, because it was assumed that dexterity in faith is not acquired in a few days or weeks."

 If this was true for Kierkegaard's generation, how much more so for our generation!  I will not assume to speak for others, but I know that I have absolutely lost sight of what it means to live in a quiet daily relationship with my God.  I often find myself wanting a deeper, more intimate, more fulfilling relationship with God...but I find other pursuits to distract myself and tell myself that I'm just refusing to settle for a quiet, inconsequential faith.  I tell myself that when the timing is right, when I read the right theologians, when I can subdue my own heart, that some ambiguous day in the future I will finally "get it" and intimacy with God will happen.  I expect immediate gratification, immediate intimacy with One to whom I won't even give 5 minutes each day.  My proud heart is not content to seek the Lord in something so antiquated as daily time with Him.  

"When the tried oldster drew near to his last hour, having fought the good fight and kept the faith, his heart was still young enough not to have forgotten that fear and trembling which chastened the youth, which the man indeed held in check, but which no man quite outgrows...except as he might succeed at the earliest opportunity in going further.  Where these revered figures arrived, that is the point where everybody in our day begins to go further."

 I pray that I learn the discipline of a quiet faith.  I pray that I learn to live in the hope of intimacy.  I pray that I learn to curb my tendencies to want "go further" and instead learn that faith is a task for a whole lifetime.  I pray, hope, and know that the cumulative impact of a quiet faith is a powerful intimacy with the Lord.

Covenant

At our Monday morning staff meeting this week we focused on the concept of covenant, and explored biblical examples as well as how the true meaning of covenant has been lost in our society today.  Covenant still carries with it connotations of a promise, maybe even a serious promise, but the deeper heart of a binding commitment is difficult to grasp.  As I understand it, a covenant is made between two parties under the authority and accountability of a third outside party.  (E.g., we often refer to marriage as a covenant between two people before God.)  Both parties are bound to one another, and serious consequences are in store for whomever dares break covenant.  In the Old Testament, covenant required a sacrifice because blood was a key part of covenant.  Every covenant mentioned in the Old Testament involves a sacrifice of blood (Gen 8, 15, and 17, just to name a few).  Blood is required to indicate how seriously both parties take the covenant; in essence, each is saying "Let this be done to me if I break covenant with you."  

While there are grave consequences for breaking covenant, the trust that is displayed by both parties allows opportunity for incredible intimacy.  Referring again to the example of marriage, when both people are truly and wholly committed to one another and to the success of the marriage, there is the freedom to give yourself fully to the other without the fear that they're going to run the opposite direction when your sinful nature surfaces.  In covenant, there is a beautiful opportunity for growth and refining.  Covenant is scary because it's a serious commitment!  It requires intense vulnerability, and it continues to demand vulnerability of each party.  It's not as if there's a plateau of vulnerability, and then you get to coast.  Covenant fosters an ongoing bond between both parties, and there is the opportunity for healthy mutual dependency that promises to be there today, tomorrow, and each day after that.  

In Jesus, we live in the New Covenant.  Christ has fulfilled the Law and has fully taken on the consequences of our sinful nature and our inability to keep covenant with God.  When God made covenant with Abram and chose the Israelites as His people, He did so with the full knowledge that they wouldn't be able to keep the Law and would break covenant again and again.  Rather than destroying mankind every time we failed (because He promised never to do that again in Genesis 8, and He is faithful even though we are not!), God accepted animal sacrifices to fulfill the covenantal demand for the shedding of blood.  When Jesus came, He came in the dual role of Sacrifice and Redeemer.  He came not only to fully and completely pay the blood sacrifice demanded by the covenant, but also to initiate a New Covenant to bring all of Creation back to relationship with God.

Now, our view of covenant directly informs how seriously we understand what it means to submit our lives to Jesus.  Do we truly understand what it means to be in covenant with the God of the Universe?  When we tell kids in Sunday school about 'asking Jesus into their heart,' do we really understand what kind of commitment we're asking of kids who still think there are monsters under the bed?  In giving our lives over to Jesus as King and Savior, we are entering into the New Covenant with Him.  We submit to His authority and reign, and we actively choose to live as He commands us to.  We refuse all other ways of living, and we obey what He asks of us.  We are binding ourselves to Him, and giving our lives over for Jesus to bind Himself to us.  That is incredible!  Don't miss the beauty of the second part:  God is committed to us.  The more we understand the gravity of covenant and seek Jesus, the more we experience the love and freedom offered to us through trusting that God will not abandon us.  We are faithless and sinful, but God is not.  He holds up His end of the covenant and offers us unending grace when we fail.  When we understand the kind of Love that is on the table, we can't help but be intrigued and want to know it more!

Long Overdue!

Oh goodness.  I honestly didn't mean to let it go this long!  To assure anyone who may be concerned, I did not die  in Wyoming.  In fact, I loved it so much that I'm going back full-time!  Soon!  

Praise the Lord, my monthly support is at a point where I can begin full-time at SROM!  I'm still a bit shy of my monthly goals, but I have enough in a one-time-gift account to supplement my current support levels so that I (should) have enough to pay rent and maybe buy food occasionally.  My incredibly supportive mother and I will start the drive early on the 1st, drive straight through the day, and arrive in Laramie later that night.  I'll have the weekend to get settled in (most likely in temporary housing...please be praying for the provision of housing!) and I start full-time on Monday the 4th!

During our course back in September (it really has been far too long since I've updated this blog.  Again, apologies!) we were given a pretty thorough introduction to SROM as an organization, their philosophy of ministry, their heart for the students they take on course, and their response to those who wonder "why wilderness?"  The more I learned about SROM, the more I got to experience the courses as a student, and the more I saw the heart of the Lord in every single one of the staff at the SROM base, the more I was blown away by the realization that I get to go back.  I get to be a part of this incredible ministry!  As I was rereading some of my journal entries from course, I came across one from our first few days where I ask God "Who am I that You have given me this experience and have called me to this place?"  Directly below this question is the response "You are My daughter, and I love you."

This became a recurring theme for me throughout the course.  My question of "what have I done?" immediately puts the focus on me.  But God resets my identity as stemming from Him; i am His daughter.  Those who know me know that I consistently struggle with perfectionism and the need to perform.  On course I was reminded again and again that God loves me and claims me as His daughter (again and again).  Just as I am.  Simple?  Elementary?  That's the gospel.  

Most of our discussions on course stemmed from the dichotomy between the heart of the orphan and the heart of a son.  This is an incredibly important concept, and one I will definitely be returning to and unpacking more in future posts.  Briefly, the heart of an orphan is a heart of insecure striving:  striving to please God and others, striving to get by in an unforgiving world, striving to be loved.  The heart of a son (or daughter) is one of response:  I trust God's love and I trust that I am eagerly welcomed at His table.  I am freed from the pressure to prove that I am His daughter, freed from the pressure to perform as His daughter, and freed from the lie that I must produce in order to keep my position as His daughter.  Therefore, I am free to respond to His love; I am free to love others more purely and selflessly; I am free to recognize and exercise the gifts He has given me.

This is huge.  This kind of Love and delight is something that I see so many of my peers hunger for without really understanding what it is they're missing.  I see the heart of the orphan as a characteristic of the Millennial generation (something we talked at length about during our WMPC course, and something I will also be returning to in future posts!) and something that I am burdened to speak to.  

John writes beautifully on this:  

"This is how we know that we belong to the truth and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence: if our hearts condemn us, we know that God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything.  Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God and receive from him anything we ask, because we keep his commands and do what pleases him.  And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us.  The one who keeps God's commands lives in him, and he in them.  And this is how we know that he lives in us: We know it by the Spirit he gave us."  (1 John 3:19-24 NIV)

Though our orphan hearts condemn us, God is much greater than our hearts. He knows our hearts better than we do, so it's not as if He's unaware of the things we've done or neglected to do.  His desire is for us to confidently approach His table and bask in His presence; not confident because of our own righteousness, but confident because of our belief in the name of His Son, Jesus Christ.

This is the heart of the Lord!  Because of that, it is also the heart and purpose of the ministry at SROM.  And I get to be a part of that.  Praise the Lord!

On Grace

What follows is a blog I wrote in December of 2011, after my first semester of LIFT.  I'm reposting it here (with a few edits) because I feel that the message of Grace is important to hear and to be daily reminded of it's simplicity.  Guiding others to a place to receive this love and grace is what drives me.  I want to work with SROM because I feel that the wilderness provides a classroom rich with opportunities to extend and (often more importantly) receive grace.  As always, please feel free to email me for more information about what I'm doing!

It has taken me 22 years of growing up in the Church to accept Christ's love. I spent most of my life growing up trying to earn my way into a position to receive Grace. I grasped the concept that I am a sinner in need of a Savior early on, but to me it translated into a sort of tally mark system: my sin was wiped away upon "asking Jesus into my heart," but all the sin after that was tallied against me. The saving power of Christ's sacrifice was sufficient to cover my sins, but that really only counted for unintentional sins. If I wanted forgiveness for the tally of sins I willfully committed I had to prove by good intentions and irreproachable behavior that I was not only sorry for my sins but striving the best I could to do better in the present and the future. If I could prove beyond reasonable doubt that I was trying to do better, I might just earn my way into a position to be forgiven. But I couldn't ever really know if I was doing enough to prove myself, not until the Day of Judgment. Assurance of Salvation? What's that?

I hope that this is as obviously wrong to you as it is to me now. But growing up it seemed to me to be the only way to reconcile the free Grace of God with His Righteousness. To me, I was showing proper reverence and fear for the Almighty Judge of the Universe. I wanted to love God, but I wanted to make sure that I was doing it right, not cheapening Grace, and properly understanding the faith I chose to follow. In so doing I undervalued Grace, had no concept of the core of what it means to be after God's own heart, and did everything wrong. Thank God that He didn't leave this sinner alone in a prison of my own misunderstanding.

There is no tally system. There is no 'enough.' There is no proving. Grace cannot be earned. The more I tried to earn it, the more I proved that I had no concept of it. There is no gift-exchange for Grace, for there is nothing that I can offer in return of equal or greater value. There is not even me, simple-minded, disobedient, self-righteous ragamuffin that I am, because everything I am and will ever be comes from God. There is Grace, and there is the God of the Universe reconciling us to Himself.

I was reading through old emails (that's a normal thing to do, right?) and came across something I sent to a friend over the summer. Upon reflection, I think this is the beginning of my waking up to Grace. It's akin to the hazy moments when you try to open your eyes in a dream and see the bedroom around you. You're not quite awake, but the reality around you begins to shape your dreams.

"I am just now learning to live in freedom toward who I am. I am full of inconsistencies and skewed perspectives and weird quirks that embarrass me and fears that drive me and baggage that weighs me down. But I want to love God. I am not overwhelmed by my humanness because I believe that God is bigger than my humanness, and big enough in fact to not only tolerate my humanness but USE my messy quirky fearful angsty cussing humanness. God doesn't call us into an awareness of Himself to love Him so that He can tolerate us in our messiness for the rest of our earthly lives, waiting it out for us to die so He can rescue our spirits up to eternal delight. He calls us into an awareness of Himself because He loves us. As we are, He loves us. He doesn't love us for who we will eventually be, He loves us for who we are. Now. Before. Always."

There is no tally system. Grace is not an 'elementary doctrine' of Christianity, it is what all other theology, orthodoxy, orthopraxy, doctrine, and dogma points to and centers on. The Gospel is not something that we as Christians ever grow out of, it is something we continually grow toward. We fool ourselves if we think that our theological studies can ever bring us to a greater revelation than Grace.

Hallelujah, my salvation is not conditional on my worthiness. Hallelujah, my salvation is not the sum total of God's plan for me. Hallelujah, His Grace is enough.